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Google Farmer Update
One of our favourite things about working in online marketing is that there’s always something new to think about. Embracing new technology, expanding our knowledge, keeping up with the ‘new’ and learning from the ‘old’ – these are all essential elements to an effective digital marketing strategy.
That’s why we jumped at the chance to attend last month’s Google@Manchester event – which was led by Google’s director of agency sales, Dominic Allon.
We sent Adam Symes, senior account director at ClickThrough Marketing, along with senior PPC account executives Meriem Nacer and Samantha Thomas, to check out the event and catch up on the latest industry news – direct from Google itself.
They reported back with some intriguing details, and the information that they gleaned from the event confirmed that our innovations in search marketing are very much in tune with Google’s own reports.
That isn’t to say that we didn’t learn anything new, though. So to start 2012 with some fresh industry facts, here are six things we learned from our visit to Google@Manchester – firstly in detail, and then summarised in a ClickThrough Google@ Manchester Infographic:
1. 52% of conversion journeys are multi-click
Shane Cassells, online conversion specialist at Google UK & Ireland, gave a presentation entitled ‘Full Value of Search’, during which he provided some inside information that will be useful for any online retailer. Cassells recommended that the timeout for shopping baskets on eCommerce sites should be extended, and that we should all consider offline sales in our conversion strategies, as it has been shown that 40% of customers will buy offline after researching a product on the internet.
The big statistic to bear in mind, however, is that more than half of conversion journeys involve multiple clicks – whereas nine out of ten PPC conversions are still credited to the final click. As a conversion-focused online marketing agency, this kind of statistic is a nice reminder that we’re doing things properly – understanding that conversion paths are as unique and complex as the people buying your products.
2. Google+ is the fastest growing social media platform in history
Google’s foray into social media has proven to be a powerful marketing tool, with 94% of the top 100 brands already on board. We’ve been keenly watching the progress of Google+ and it will feature significantly in our social media marketing strategy for 2012, as we create and promote Google+ brand pages for our clients.
What Google@Manchester revealed is just how breathtakingly quick the rise of Google+ has been. Despite only being launched in June of last year, Google+ now has more than 40 million members – making its initial growth faster than Facebook, Myspace or Twitter.
To further cement its position as an innovative social networking tool, the portion of the show dedicated to Google+ was delivered as a video conference via the Google+ Hangout feature.
3. Customers are nine times more likely to click on mobile banners
Dr Patrick Dixon, futurist and chairman of Global Change Ltd, delivered a stirring speech called ‘Bringing It All Together: A Look Into the Future’. His scientific approach to marketing had the crowd transfixed – our own Adam Symes described Dixon as “one of the best speakers [he had] ever heard.”
His talk focused on the future of marketing, the emotional effects that marketing has on us and how we can build emotional relationships with our end users – pointing out that 80% of potential customers will lose interest if a process takes longer than 20 seconds. He made enough points to warrant multiple blog posts on this theme alone – but for the sake of brevity, we’ll focus on the intriguing details he offered on mobile marketing.
Dixon pointed out that whilst standard web-based banners typically have a 0.5% clickthrough rate (CTR), mobile banners boast a CTR that is nine times higher. He also mentioned the fact that mobile users are twice more likely to click on a banner after 8pm than earlier in the day. With only 17% of UK businesses offering mobile-optimised websites, but almost half of online consumers using their smartphones or tablets when researching or buying a product, it’s clear that businesses are risking missed opportunities if they ignore the powerful and growing mobile user base.
4. 60% of organic clicks are from top-three search positions
Dr Dixon also shared this search engine results surprise. We’ve always focused on getting top-tier results for our clients in the results pages of Google, Yahoo!, Bing and other leading search providers – what Dixon’s statistic shows is how incredibly important it is to optimise every facet of your business’s webpage. With an increasingly clued-up online user base, appearing in the first page of a Google search just isn’t enough anymore.
5. 48 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
Another highlight of the event was the ‘Connected TV’ panel, featuring experts from Google, the BBC and IAB (the Internet Advertising Bureau). Here we learned that video-sharing site YouTube is continuing to grow at a phenomenal rate, and how technology manufacturers, agencies and companies can come together to combine the best elements of internet video and traditional television – with the interactivity and customer targeting of the internet, and the quality and reach that television can still offer.
Perhaps the overarching theme that we can glean from this discussion is that YouTube should not be ignored as an online marketing tool. By their nature, Google+ and Facebook offer a quicker, easier and more cost-effective way of communicating directly with customers. However, when a video booms on YouTube, it really booms – few social websites have the potential for viral marketing that YouTube provides. Rest assured, we have some tricks up our sleeve that utilise the video sharing site that started it all.
6. Digital sales grew by 16% in the third quarter of 2011
‘It’s All About You’ was Mark Howe’s contribution to proceedings. The country sales director for Google UK opened the show by discussing the tremendous growth that was been observed in eCommerce in the third quarter of 2011.
This is good news for any business that uses the internet to promote its products, and further proof that consumers are increasingly turning to online purchasing despite the continuingly difficult economic circumstances. With the rise of price comparison websites, and review portals such as Trustpilot – which provide customers with the opportunity to rate online shops according to their experiences – it is more important than ever to ensure that your online business practice and promotional strategy are up-to-date. Dr Patrick Dixon predicted that price comparison websites will destroy businesses within five years if their prices aren’t competitive enough.
Did you attend the Google@Manchester event? If so, what were your highlights?
Retail sales are already down 1.6% and high street stores are slashing their prices with the Boxing Day sales starting 21 days early. So, as a company looking to cash in on this seasonal spree, what do you need to be doing *today*?
BBC News had an interesting piece with a shopper this morning, who said she was doing plenty of window shopping and then going home to check out the prices online for the items she wished to buy as Christmas presents.
“The deals are online. You can tell your friends about them, shout about them.”
This highlights in itself a human trait: people love to boast about a bargain, and social networks have made this very simple.
So, firstly, give your web presence a once over and make sure that the items you most want to sell during the coming 3 weeks are easy to find – on your site, on your Facebook page, on Twitter, and on the search engines. You will struggle to change your search engine rankings in this short time period (Note to self: start preparing the website for the Christmas season in July/August) but there are plenty of quick ways to promote your site that will get instant exposure using social media and alternative methods such as optimised photos and video, which are often listed more quickly by the search engines.
Next, check your backend systems. If you promote items, will you be able to ship and deliver in time? Are these items already in stock? A failure to deliver on time, which could be hampered by unforeseen circumstances such as this week’s snow, will have long reaching consequences for your brand and reputation so don’t raise expectations. Be realistic in your promises to customers about delivery time. If the item is likely to be late, issue a beautiful gift card or voucher, along with expected delivery date, so that the recipient can be given that on the day. Don’t lose the sale – it is simple touches like this that will make the purchase decisions easy for the customer.
Next, work on your social media presence. Build up your following by offering your existing friends and followers special deals to ’shout’ about to their friends. And put someone in charge of your Twitter and Facebook accounts for the next week at least to get people engaged and talking to you.
You need to get a dialogue going and not just people with large numbers of followers. You cannot know what people do offline. We all know plenty of people who don’t tweet but who know people who do, and that chance conversation about, “Oh, I saw one of those on twitter today. Company XYZ have an offer on,” could win you that all important sale. And every sale matters, as does the customer service backing it.
So, man your phones and email account with the friendliest, nicest, most patient staff you have. Christmas is a stressful time for everyone, and a cheery voice and a 
in an email will go a long way towards buying you long-term evangelists of your brand and products.
What other ideas are you putting into practice this holiday season to increase the chances of a sale? Share them with our readers, especially easy to implement ones that may make that little bit of difference in these hard times that are upon us.
And we are all consumers, so what would you like companies to be doing? What will make you part with your hard-earned cash?
It’s fascinating that even after all these years involved with search engine and internet marketing, there are still those who believe that being in the top 10 results on a search engine is the only result that matters when promoting a business online. And, more interestingly, that many company executives believe that typing in the company name (or, worse, the URL) into the search engine and ranking number one, proves that the budget spent on internet marketing is justified.
Let us consider the problems with the above misunderstanding, particularly for SMEs.
Firstly, if the only budget you are spending to market your business online is on search engine optimisation, you are missing a huge audience. Whilst many companies may not feel that there is the necessary time and resource to handle multiple social media accounts, this is a) where agencies come in and b) a misunderstanding of how social media operates – you do not need a vast social media presence to benefit.
Obviously, the search engines are a logical and essential place for you to have an online presence. However, it is vital to understand how people use the search engines before making the (wrong) assumption that all searchers looking for your company, products and services will type in your company name. Or your URL. If a potential customer knows your URL, and are a savvy Internet user, they are just as likely to type this directly into the location browser of the browser and bypass the search engines entirely.
What is far more likely is that the person looking for your products does not actually know you exist as a company, is unaware of your URL or company name, and therefore will only find your website if it is optimised for the specific terms being searched upon.
If you sell a product, particularly one that is in a competitive market, there is a strong possibility that your website visitors and sales come from word of mouth recommendations from the potential buyer’s social network, from comparison sites, or from links and reviews on other, well-trafficked websites.
Returning to the search engine optimisation issue, many websites do not actually rank for the terms that the average searcher is likely to use to find your product. Many websites are built by website designers, rather than by designers with search engine optimists’ assistance. Whilst Management may love the look of your website, if it does not work for either the search engines or your potential visitors, it will not work for you either.
Therefore, it is important to check that your site includes the terms most likely to be searched for, that these terms occur in all the places required by the search engines, and that the site is competitively optimised in order to rank above others selling similar products.
If the last is not feasible because you are a small fish in a big pond, then it is even more imperative that you use many of the other tools in the internet marketing toolbox to attract attention. eg social media.
To see how well your website is doing on Google, type your main product into the search box and check your ranking. Check your analytics to see how many visitors you are getting from the terms you had expected to be those bringing in most traffic. Think long and hard about where else you are marketing and whether it is driving the necessary traffic to your website. Perhaps 2012 may be the time for a change of tactics?
A recent report by YouGov states that less than a fifth of SMEs using Google Adwords recoup their costs, and the remaining 82% do not appear to know whether they are getting any benefit from PPC or even recovering their ad spend in sales.
One of the problems is undoubtedly that many SMEs use Pay Per Click as a marketing tactic before understanding what needs to be achieved and how to do so. Whilst PPC is a potentially effective strand to any marketing bow, the temptation may be to rush in before fully understanding how the system works, and then it is also undoubtedly too simple to presume that you can use it as a “Set It and Forget It” service.
Yet, PPC is like anything in that it improves the more time you dedicate to it. So, a mere 30 minutes per week to review your campaign and try out new ad ideas and text/copy can pay dividends.
The fact that such a large number of businesses do not appear to be recovering their costs is not reflected here at ClickThrough Marketing amongst our clients. Amy Bott, Head of Paid Search & Affiliates at ClickThrough, stated, “It’s not uncommon to see ROI of three, four or five times spend. For example, one of our larger clients, Norgren, has generated £9 in sales for every £1 spent on PPC. But it’s not just big companies who can benefit. Small companies can also start to see increased returns on their ad spend by adding in keyword negatives, following best practice in account structure, limiting spend on broad match, controlling CPCs and by thinking carefully about keyword selection.”
Even companies who are spending in the tens of pounds rather than the tens of thousands of pounds on PPC can achieve similar results by understanding the mechanisms behind PPC.
In our 101 Guide to PPC we cover many of the issues such as Quality Score, campaigns, ad copy, keywords, relevancy and much more of the essential tips and tricks which will help any SME to ensure a return on the marketing spend for PPC.
This basic understanding of PPC could mean all the difference between throwing money down the drain and increasing online sales. For instance, is your business setting a cap on spending, especially during the hours that your target audience is least likely to be online? Google will happily spend your advertising budget showing ads when the clickthroughs are least likely to result in a sale, so you need to ensure that this does not occur. Low clickthroughs will also affect your Quality Score, which tends to have a knock on effect over time, lowering the likely placement of an ad in the rankings, amongst other undesirable consequences.
In addition, it is important for SMEs to realise that the competition being faced may be amongst the largest corporates, particularly for certain highly desirable terms, and spending your precious budget on these terms is likely to result in lower sales. There is also too little attention paid to making sure that the terms being used lead to the appropriate landing page and a call to action relevant to the ad copy.
Once upon a time, a request for an email address was a sure fire way to be able to reach someone. Now, as recent research shows, email usage amongst the next generation has dropped by a staggering 59%, and for the vast majority of the rest of us, email has quite simply become a burden.
So, how do you get in touch and stay in touch?
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems have been solving this problem for the last few years and we need to start learning, fast, from these solutions. But, that simple question: “How would you prefer to be contacted?” no longer has a simple three phase answer: email, snail mail or telephone.
What we need to consider now is far more complex. As social networks expand and people become more au fait with their smart phones, tablets, and alternative ways of communicating, you need to find the communication medium of choice for your customers and contacts. And you can pretty much bet your bottom dollar that for the vast majority of people – email is not IT.
Spam is not the only problem. The sheer deluge of emails into your average inbox each day means that many people are just ignoring email as a means for communication. And for instant communication, as the #blackberrycrumble showed this last week or so, even your smart phone cannot save you if something more major goes amiss with email servers.
People are relying on a variety of mechanisms to stay in contact and as a company, it is now down to you to learn and adapt to the chosen communication channels of choice for your users. Whether that is Twitter, Facebook, SMS, email, a phone call, or a visit. And then within each of those channels, you may need to understand more comprehensively how your user uses that channel to stay informed.
So, for instance, post something on Twitter as a reply to a tweet I have sent or as part of a conversation I was involved with, and I will only know if it includes @myhandle. I simply do not have time to constantly monitor Twitter so the only way you can reach me is a DM or a replytome. Start a conversation on Twitter with 3 or 4 other people and you will see how Twitter handles start to fall off quite quickly in 140 characters.
Post something on a Facebook page for a client and how will I know unless you tell me?
Understanding how each of those you contact uses social networking and communication channels is becoming a must. Look at those in your office and close family. Do you know the best method for contacting each of them, according to their preferences, which will raise an instant response? If so, then you need to start applying similar knowledge to your wider address book.
For instance, don’t leave me a voice message or expect me to spot an email in the several thousand which arrive each day. Instead, a DM on any of the social networks will arrive as an SMS to my mobile phone. However, you will never know how I set up my personal devices to receive my personal communications, so you need to guess until you know. And then when you know, you need to target me in the most effective manner possible.
Here are some examples:
x: will only answer emails. Thinks SMS are the spawn of satan and will not answer. Ever. The smartphone lives in a box waiting to be sold as a heritage item, like an Atari.
y: loves Twitter. Always picks them up within moments, even at the dead of night. Other than that….
z: checks email weekly. Chooses 10-20 emails to answer only. Facebook, LinkedIn, and social bookmark sites such as delicious and Digg are monitored constantly.
Worrying? It should be if you are relying on email to reach your target audience. It is time to get personal and understand how your audience wishes to communicate. A good CRM mechanism is essential and a full appreciation of the cost of NOT reaching your audience with your messages will force you to look into these solutions.
What does your company use?
There seems to be a fear, not just in major brands but also in SMEs, about mobile marketing. We all relate to the subject based on how we feel about our mobile phones. Just ask around the office right now, or your family, how they feel about marketing messages on their mobiles, and you will see where this fear could stem from. For the vast majority of people, receiving a marketing message on your mobile is a no-no.
However, mobile marketing is not just about sending a text/SMS to a willing (or unwilling) recipient. Mobile marketing needs to be thought of as a far broader church. Once you understand what a mobile phone is capable of, and how your potential audience are most likely to use theirs, then you can target your actions appropriately.
For instance, SMEs, retail outlets and rural businesses should all be at the least listed on Foursquare. This is one of those discrete and gentle touches with mobile marketing and geolocation. A simple sticker in your window, register your venue/outlet/premises on the Foursquare site, and offer a Mayoral prize each week to attract customers to check in.
You can take this further by organising flash mobs at your venue or shop and offering a special FourSquare badge or similar to those who attend. Tie this in with a Tweet-up and people will hang around that much longer. And spend, remember, talk, tweet about the event etc. Don’t forget a good hashtag for Twitter….
Apps are of course the big thing and generally these fall into three main courts – iPhone, Blackberry and Android. Whatever you do with mobile marketing should try to reach all the bodies of smartphone users, or risk alienating those who are left out.
Starting with the simplest type of engagement, you can encourage people to take photos either of your venue, products or for a themed competition. Add a little creativity, such as encouraging instant uploads with Instagram, or composing them into Photograms, and almost anyone with a camera phone and an app can enter.
Perhaps this is where many people fall down in the definition of ‘marketing’. It is no longer simply push marketing that is required, but now, especially with social networks, pull marketing with heavy consumer engagement is equally as important.
So, it is no longer about billboards and TV adverts that force feed the information about a product to the consumer, but very much more about dialogue, engagement and consumer interaction.
What else can you do with mobile marketing? What are you doing with mobile marketing that you feel others couldn/should be doing too?
When we work with a new client reviewing their search strategy, there is a common set of issues that are often discussed. I thought it would be useful to set these down, so that you can think through which apply to you. I have covered them as a series of basic questions to be reviewed.
Question 1. Goals and objectives
Do we have the right types of goals to review paid search effectiveness and efficiency?
You should set goals and review performance against volume (e.g. visits), quality (e.g. bounce rate, conversion % to lead or sale), cost (e.g. average cost per click and cost per conversion) and value measures (e.g. for transactional Ecommerce sites with a referral engine, Cost Per Acquisition, ROAS, Revenue per visit). If you’re not running a transactional site, you should still try to establish the value of leads since you won’t be able to estimate the returns you need otherwise.
Question 2. Performance targets
Do we have clear targets to ensure the agency meets goals of value generation and cost?
If you’re not paying by performance, then it’s essential to set targets to encourage optimisation of the account through improving quality score
Question 3. Keyphrase targeting selection and reporting
Are you investing in the right keyphrases to meet your objectives and performance targets?
Often not enough consideration is given into how to group keyphrases so that the right investments are made to drive commercial outcomes. Suitable top-level grouping of the performance of the many search terms on an account will be needed to do this. For example, can you determine the commercial contribution of these:
Using the new Multichannel Funnels in Google Analytics for search analysis can help you identify terms which assist in conversion to sale, even if they aren’t responsible for the final click.
Question 4. Always on paid search
Are we investing continuously in paid search at the levels necessary to create demand for our products and help consumers choose us?
In some companies, paid search is intermittent, often related to campaigns which may miss opportunities if the case for continuous, always-on paid search hasn’t been made.
Did you know that according to Google research on their client accounts, 89% of search traffic is incremental?
Question 5. Customer journeys
Are we directing visitors to the right landing pages on our site to meet our objectives?
Test whether it is best to route visitors direct to a category landing page, rather than the home or category page. Ask where it makes sense to create tailored landing pages to increase conversion and quality score rather than existing site pages.
As mentioned in question 3, the importance of multiple visits in driving sales should also be understood.
Question 6. Improving relevance and Quality Score
How can we improve quality score?
To improve account efficiency means improving relevance of ads based on targeting through account structure, match types and ad creative.
Since Google Quality Score is so important to managing paid search we recommend you read this latest guidance if you’re unfamiliar with it.
Question 7. Google Display Network
Are we managing the display network well enough?
The Display network (once known as the Content Network) can still be effective for demand generation and generating awareness since your ads are displayed on related pages/sites according to the keywords they contain. It’s often neglected because of poor performance when it isn’t treated separately from Google search, but it can and should be optimised.
Question 8. Remarketing
Are we using Google’s new Remarketing features?
Adwords now uses cookies from previous visitors to the site to use ads on the Content Network to remind visitors who have shown interest in a product to explore more. Define clear re-targeting rules which target those with the highest intent and potential value, for example directing to the referral engine or store locator where relevant.
Question 9. Non-Google networks
Do we pay enough attention to other search networks
In this note I have focused on Google since it’s dominant in many markets but not all – in many others Google is not the market leader. But consumers do use other search networks and particularly for brand keyphrases volume will be sufficient in other search engines. So select the top 3-5 search networks that are important in your country and apply these notes across all 3 networks.
Question 10. Testing and review
What is our optimisation process to improve ROI?
All search networks have excellent options to test targeting, offer and creative, so put time into refining the approach for all the different factors above.
So those are the ten fundamental questions to improve paid search, I hope they help you review your approach.
In August, Google announced a new feature which has been dubbed “mega sitelinks”. Although this seems to be a small change which wasn’t widely reported, we think it is important.
The reason, is that for every site of a well-known brand, the most important searches by volume are brand search terms. Sitelinks give an excellent opportunity to engage both customers and prospects by highlighting the best content.
If you’re not familiar with Sitelinks, they are the listing of extra links below the brand main site description when you search on a brand name. Before this change site links in the natural search results gave just a series of links. But this example showing the new sitelinks for ClickThrough Marketing, shows that they now take up much more of the page with 8 to 12 alternatives and include more detailed descriptions.
ClickThrough Marketing - Mega Sitelinks Example
We suggest you take a look at your sitelinks and those of your competitors and answer these questions:
Most established brands will already have sitelinks, so you can skip this question. If you’re a small business or not in the top position the change won’t help you, in fact it could push you down the search results page.
If your sitelinks are wrong or have glitches like an unsuitable title or error page, then it’s worth changing these – this can be done in Google Webmaster Tools as explained below.
Since Google’s site algorithm is automatic it does a good job of highlighting the most important and shared pages on a site – typically those within the main navigation. But also other popular or shared content.
You can’t tell Google what you DO want as a sitelink, but you can tell it what you DON’T want. This is where you go to in Google Webmaster Tools and the new Google facility.
One of the big changes is that the new site link adds a description – if you want to change this, you can through editing the meta description of the page through the CMS.
The most important description is for the home page – often this doesn’t explain the site value prop well, but this one does.
Adwords now has its own “Ad Sitelinks” above the natural listing – you may want to use these to highlight offers that are popular in your natural sitelinks – or missing! These work well for many ClickThrough clients already.
This is where people search for the brand name plus a product or service. It seems that Google may include more of these now, so you check your analytics to see whether Brand plus phrases are driving traffic for you.
You can use the Landing page report in Google Analytics to see the importance of different brand phrases in driving traffic. This graphic summarises the steps to tackle this.
You may not know it but Tesco is the number 2 supermarket in Korea. And Korea is the land of super dooper Internet connectivity that puts Britain’s 2-20Mbps to shame. On top of that the Koreans have mastered everything mobile and tend to lead the way in mobile apps and services.
Shopping at rush hour in any city in the world is a faff. And carrying the bags back home – even worse. So, what has Tesco done? They have created a shop where there are simply life-size replicas of all the products and you scan them with your smartphone to add them to your virtual shopping basket. Which is then delivered to you at home.
This video highlights the experiment.
Tesco takes QR codes to new shopping levels
Whilst QR codes are still a novelty here, where smartphone ownership is considerably lower than older style phones, there are increasing numbers of uses being found for them around the world. Animated tattoos, QR codes on headstones, people wearing ties with QR codes for business contact details or to show a promotional video, in magazines, and on every product and space imaginable.
Now, start to imagine your expensive print brochure – 2D, static and with just a link to your website – coming alive with the use of QR codes. User manuals, videos of your products being used, customer testimonials on your site or Youtube, podcasts, business contact details, the latest news on your blog, even a webinar held only the previous day. All of this becomes possible with QR codes.
Tesco’s solution in Korea to the rush hour shopping problem, maximising the use of underground tunnels to capture new customers, is just a start. Any business can make use of QR codes in a fun and innovative manner, to cut production costs for marketing collateral, to attract attention to promotional material, to reach new customers.
Even adding one to your business card can mean you can easily share your business details when you are networking and know that your details are now securely held in the phone of your new contact, not lost deep inside a pocket.
All it needs is a little imagination and a QR generator such as Kaywa
Today, Google announced a new service to help speed up the delivery speed of web pages, which as we know is one of the criteria applied in the SEO algorithm for SERPs. The Page Speed Service works by “applying web best practices” to your pages. Other services such as CloudFlare also offer similar solutions to speed up page downloads.
In order to use the Google Page Speed Service, you are required to point your DNS to Google so that they can grab your content, apply the best practice formula to your site, and serve it up more quickly.
This raises an issue, or three, about security, privacy and Google’s access to your company’s data, and that of users who visit your site. The previous mod_pagespeed which was an Apache module which could be applied to your site by you and helped to optimise code for faster speeds. It did not, however, hold on to your data or serve it from a Google server. Whilst Google servers very rarely fall over and are unlikely to, just the issue of having your data under Google’s data centre roof must be a cause for concern for businesses.
Optimising pages so that they load more quickly is important not just for search engine results, but also to avoid upsetting your site visitors whose time is precious. You have at most 7 seconds to capture their attention and if even 50% of that is wasted on page load, you are unnecessarily losing potential customers.
One simple action that can be taken with static sites (i.e. those not dynamically created from databases etc) is to strip out all of the spaces in the code before uploading the page to the server. Many years ago we created a tool to do just this and could make savings in download speed anywhere from 15-80% by doing so. Another method for optimising your pages for download is to limit javascripts, and simplify the CSS so that the code is sleek rather than bloated.
Pictures should be rendered for the web not for print, and third party scripts can slow things down if their server is slow to respond, so use these judiciously. The Google +1 button has just been speeded up for precisely this reason, because Google was having to advise putting it at the bottom of pages rather than the top to speed up page load times.
You should also check that your hosting company has the optimal set-up as far as connectivity to the internet so that their servers can respond as quickly as possible to requests for your content.
So, there are simple ways to optimise your pages for download time. Handing the keys to your website to Google? Hmmm….
